Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (21 page)

"Hallows,” said Barbary. “Table's laid for thee.” Horn spoon and wooden bowl. Shyly, Margaret came and sat among them, folding herself small. Scrape and clatter, they took up their knives, and set to with a will. Eyes like shoe-nails. A stithy of tongues. She did as they did: sipped the strange bitter stuff, spooned up the salty mess of porridge. Glanced covertly. Five maids: the sly dark girl and the pale demure one, cheek to chin and whispering; a pair of sonsy country lasses, frankly curious and tucking in, with elbows well squared; and down at the foot of the table, a wispy, bewildered girl, spoon in the air and gazing. Only five. And the kitchen boy. Round as a hedgepig and as rough and dawdling. The swags of green had withered.

Barbary looked round the table. “Cat got yer tongues? Ye clatter quick enough when there's work toward."

Dark deftly licked her spoon. “An we'd cream til our porridge, then cats would have our tongues."

"And welcome,” said Barbary. She becked her chin at the dark girl. “Now then. Yon malapert is Alys Kyteler..."

"Cat Malison to thee."

"And her gossip's Nell Blanchett."

"Hob Ellender."

"Cat's Paw,” said one of the sonsy girls, scornfully. “Always i't cream."

"And here's Will Shanklin's daughters from up Owlriggs.” The country girls. “Nan and Doll."

"Doll Kickpail and Nan Slutswool."

Barbary pointed her knife at Spoon-in-the-Air. “And yon mislaying clashpot is Susannah Hawtrey."

"Morn t'ye,” said the girl, and blushed.

"Sukey Bet Suckathumb."

"Sleeps wi’ a babby."

"Who won't dust i't master's study?"

Awe and trembling assertion. “In his babbyhouse..."

"Thou goslin. ‘Tis a cupboard."

"...there's ghosts."

"Dead things,” said Doll.

"So there's not, nobbut kickshaws,” said Nan. “Won't eat thee."

But, “Mammysuck,” jeered Cat.

"Enough o that, Mistress Lick-Luff-and-Wash-Whiskers.” Barbary turned to the smutchy kitchen boy, round-eyed and agape. “And yon's Will Constant o Seventrees. Wick Billy."

"Cause he's slow."

He bobbed again.

"Shepherd's outwith, and t'men afield. They's nowt o thy concerning. Nor neither thine, Doll Draggletail.” Barbary looked round the table. Bowls scraped and mugs empty. Crumbs.

Nan said, “Is she Mistress, then? Being one o't Grevilry."

"Just Margaret.” But Barbary looked doubtful.

A poor shorn sort of name, said their faces.

Margaret set down her bowl. “...of Nine Law."

Uneasy respect for that, a shadow of awe.

Barbary rose. “Time we was to work. Thou, Margaret. T'master waits on thee. In his closet, he did say. Cat, Ellender, bedmaking. See they's aired. Nan, Doll, cheeses. Hens, Sukey."

Dark and fair caught Margaret by the dresser.

"Here's t'King's daughter o Elfland.” Cat made a pretty leg and Nell a courtesy. They blocked the doors at either end. “My lady Nine Law. Your servants.” All sincerity, caress: but with a sting in it, a spider in the cream. “What's come o yer siller gown? Tousled?"

"Turned arainwebs. Dead leaves."

"And my lady turned Margery Daw."

No getting by.

"Here's a dance. My lord Grevil's Maggot."

"For as many as will."

"Thinkst thou the dance can dance?"

"Wi’ a fiddler afore. Will play on her."

"Thou, Magpie!” A pinch. “Mind thee, I's counted spoons."

"And what if she's prigged them? If she would she may. She's Noll Nuttycrack's toy.” Nell smiled. “Will keep her in's babbyhouse."

"His grasshop that he leashes wi’ a silken hair."

"His bait. For t'pike to snap at."

No rise.

"Dost knaw Noll Grevil, what he is?” said Nell to Margaret.

Silence.

"He's a man-witch. Will learn thee to talk."

"Will slit thy tongue."

Margaret was sent up as garnish to a dish of marrowbones and a leathern jug of ale. Barbary led her through the hall and a wainscot parlor, beeswaxed and a little wormy, up a doglegged stair. She knocked with her elbow. “Here's breakfast and t'lass."

A little panelled room, low-ceilinged, looking out on ghostly trees. All white: she could not tell what was flower, and what fog. Master Grevil sat writing in a jackdaw's nest of ink and papers, book on open book. He wore a sober suit of mole-gray and nutgall brown, with many buttons; his linen very plain and fine. There was a little creature like a plume of fire on his shoulder, tuft-eared and pinchfaced; absently he fed it bits of crumb with inky fingers. His daemon? As he rose and bowed to her curtsey, it rode him, chittering and scolding. He glanced at Margaret's quenched and braided sobriety, and sighed. From a green child to a greensick girl.

"Hempen hampen! Is the imp not vanished with her suit of clothes?"

"We do stay her with cream,” said Barbary. “Would you set her at brewing? At spinning?"

"Neither as yet. You may leave us."

"You'll be wanting more candles?"

"Anon."

He beckoned Margaret forward. Wary of the scolding imp, she came a step or two, and stood with downcast eyes that missed nothing. Books. Hundreds at least. What titles? Crusts and bones. An ape-headed cittern. A flute. Nutshells. Lees of wine. His table was covered with long folios and odd scraps of paper, written over in a thorny hand: scrawls, blotches, crossings-out. A drawing.
Stars?

He saw, in her still face, her sidelong gaze. “The Nine."

"Please you, sir?"

"The stones. Where I found you, on Law. We do call them Nine Weaving, or Fiddler and Hey."

The sky below.
“Are they always there?"

She'd puzzled him. “Before this hall. Before this world, I doubt. Do stones walk?"

Are the stars made earthfast?
But she spoke no answer.

He began again, as dancers in a set dishevelled, on the proper foot. “You slept well? And have broken your fast? I would have you comfortably bestowed."

"Well. I thank you, sir."

"You may call me Grevil. I am master here. Low Askwith Hall.” A hesitation. “Cloud."

Again she made her courtesy. “Master Grevil."

"Have you a name?"

"Margaret, sir."

"No other? Of what birth?"

"None."

"What? Did you grow like missel, in the air?"

"Like stone, I think, sir. In the earth."

"A cold lap for a nurse,” he said. Took up a stone from a heap of writings; set it down. “Yet flowers spring of it.” And again, that rueful measure in his voice: “
That legion of the grass that withers, all untold.
” He looked at Margaret. “So, Mistress Mouldwarp. I would hear your traveller's tale, your history of dark. Are there manors then beneath our wandering sheep? And courtiers of chrysoprase? Are all their midwives miners? For my nurse did say ‘twas all a maze of gallantry, of music and of light."

She thought of the cracked virginals, the scuttling dark; but answered gravely. “None that I have heard."

"Are you not of that quality? Those folk that we call Unleaving?"

Her turn to startle. “Unleaving? Is that not a country of the air? The Wood Above?"

"Aye, those northern stars about the Ship that never set.” He turned the outward of his hand to her, to show his ring. “Of old, my family took it as device: the Ship and Tree, whose ever-autumn is the sky. That fair folk live about its roots, ‘tis written in philosophy. They fleet as do its leaves the stars."

"But I am none of theirs."

"I see,” he said regretfully. “By daylight, you are someways earthier than first I saw, of none such subtle stuff. You breathe.” A sideways smile. “Mistress Barbary will have it that you sneeze."

He shuffled through his papers, held one out. More drawings. “Grey Wethers at Askrigg.” Another. “Long Meg and her Daughters at Imber Lap.” She studied them.

"What think you?"

"As images? Most curious."

"But of the stones?"

"I know not."

"Some say they dance at Ninerise, when they hear the fiddler. And others, that when stones hear, they may dance. ‘Tis said they are foxcastles, strongholds of a greener world. I think—I think they are knots between this world and another. Here. There. And one long seam, the Lyke Road, that we all must walk.” He traced it with a finger; looked sidelong at Margaret. “But few of us backward."

She bent still closer to the leaves of drawings. “Sir. Here, where ‘tis written
Scar Fell,
what place is that?"

"You can read?"

As if he'd asked,
Can you breathe?
“And cipher."

"Can you write?” He pulled up a lionheaded chair, set a half-scrawled leaf in front of her, found and mended a pen. “Copy that."

She bent to her task.
Qu'y: Whether Earthfasts at Tinding bee of lunish Stone or no?

"An antick character,” he said, bemused. “Where...?” He caught himself.

"Sir?"

Turning to the window, he looked out. “'Tis a history,” he said, “of Cloud its ancientry, high Cloud. There are remnants of it, that in custom and in vulgar memory, the common tongue, yet live.” Still his back to her, his arm raised to the windowframe, his brow to the glass. “A kind of monument."

"A book?” He turned round at her voice. Her face now one astonishment. “You've made a book?” As if he'd said,
I wrote this tree.

Pink to the ears now. “Pieces of one. That is, ‘tis matter for a book...” He gestured at the table, helplessly. “...but in a sort dispersed."

Leaves scattered through the study. “Is there aught I can do?"

"I would not burden you."

She remembered kitchen talk. “My keep would burden you. Like ... a grasshopper.” (She imagined a dwarfish fiddler all in silken green.) “Is there no work I could do?"

"Would you grovel in the ashes? Scrape trenchers? I'd not have you prey to these kitchen cullions and their hobbyhorses,” he said fiercely.

"I am not schooled in kitchenry. But I can write. Would you have me copy for you?"

He relented. “Would it not weary you, to read this crabbed philosophy?"

"It is tales to me. New worlds."

He picked up her copy, studied it aslant. “'Tis an Outlune hand, and somewhat straggling in the character. But fair enough. ‘Twill serve.” He bent and scrabbled in the litter on his table for a silver coin; held it out to her. “So then: fair copy of foul papers. And thy wage is..."

"I ask none."

"Come, you are a Cloudishwoman now. When I say
five
, your word is
seven
."

"Then ... might I read of your library?"

"And welcome. But that is—no, not fire and fleet, but air. What other?"

They had locked her in the dark, too often. “Candles?"

"Nine a week. Of wax. Brock's penny and a bargain. Clap?"

When she took his cool, dry, inky hand, it shook a little—doubting on her flesh?—then clasped.

"Here, as you write, we may talk at whiles, we grasshoppers. If we are burdens on the harvest, we at least may sing.” He sat down caterwise to her, spread open one stout folio, as if to work; but walked and twirled his compasses, up and down the page, and up and down. Stalk and pirouette and stalk. He looked up at last at Margaret. “Tell me. How came you, threadneedle, out of Law?"

Beyond the wood lies nowhere. For a time, the witches walk through wreathed and drifted light; but that grows scanter, fading into rime. Is gone. They're on black moorland, climbing.

"A shrewd wind,” says Malykorne.

"Aye,” Brock says. “Colder, by and by,"

No moon,
thinks Margaret, stumbling on. She sees unmeaning stars above her, scattered, like a broken chain of stones. And at her feet, stark nowhere. Mist and hag. They travel out of Law, unmazed, unislanded.
No walls,
she thinks, and shivers, awestruck. Yet a road: they walk the set stones of a trod, meet standing stones like hooded travellers, far seen and seldom come upon.

"No lantern,” she says. “How is it we travel?"

"Dark o't moon,” says Malykorne.

At a waystone, they part. There are coins on it, worn silver, lying in a shallow like a stoup. Brock chinks them, pockets. “I's off."

"Ah,” says the leaf-witch.

"I's a tryst,” says the dark witch. “Wi’ a traveller."

"Your coat...?” says Margaret, and makes to doff it.

But the dark witch shrugs. “Best keep that whiles. Thou's colder than I s'll be.” And jangling, she lopes away.

"Coming?” says the leaf-witch. “Farther back than onward.” Margaret twists up her skirts and follows. The witch walks no straight path, from stone to stone, but wanders all askant the bushes, plucking lightwebs from the thorns. Margaret strays after. Apronless, she stuffs the pockets of the coat. Light stuff as thistledown; drifting as dreams. As wiry. She keeps close at the witch's heels: so vast a dark.

They go on.

"Oh,” says Margaret, halting. “Oh, it's lost.” On the fellside is a naked child, a waif that shivers, dancing on the moss. All naked as the moon.

The leaf-witch turns, glances. “Not yet."

Margaret stands. “Is it ... dead?"

"Unborn."

"Can you not comfort it?"

"Would have it so? His mam will die of him."

Still Margaret lingering, gazes, and still the waif-child whirls and shivers. Now she sees his bare feet bend no stem, nor break the blind ice of the hags. He dances open-eyed, unseeing. Naked: turning in a flare of silver, he's unclouded of his flesh. And for a moment, like a falling star, she sees him burning and unburnt with cold: as clear as adamant, aethereal, skyblack. Like crystal fiery from the blast, new-blown. It is the living that consume; this spirit holds: a glass that gathers in its bent the scattered stars, new-spells them in a soul. A child with child of its ascendants, great with light.

A trembling naked child.

"Far to go,” calls Malykorne beyond her. Dark. She hurries after.

There are children back of Law. She scries them, cold as star-shot and as clear against the coalsack hills. That whirling, solitary wraith. A crouching child that scrabbles at the earth with bloodless hands, and weeps. A ranting ghost. And cowered in a thornbush by a silent beck, two sisters, wreathed in one another's arms. Like cherries twinned and rounding on a single stalk; like moonstones budded of a seed, ingeminate. One sky between them, and a single dream: a hooked moon at their hearts, re-echoed stars. As Margaret makes to pass, she sees one sister tinge with dawning, and her lifting hair, as if by wind; the other still lies dark.